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An Electronic Travel Authorization (eTA) is a new requirement for foreign nationals from visa-exempt countries arriving in Canada by air, whether to visit the country directly or to pass through in transit.

Those looking for a job in oil and gas or related industries this year will not find the odds too favorable. With an economy that has some softness economists at the Conference Board of Canada said in their latest report that job seekers will have to wait until 2016 for real broad based employment opportunities to arise.

According to Statistics Canada, 35,000 jobs were added in January but the increase was largely due to part-time work. Meanwhile, the percentage of Canadians who aren’t working is at historic highs with many dropping out of the job search altogether.

However, according to some experts, if you’re able to adapt, there are many jobs for people across the country.

“In Canada right now, most industries are stable,” said Nathan Laurie, president of Jobpostings.ca, a company that works to connect students and recent graduates to meaningful careers.

Areas that are experiencing the most growth include science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.

Laurie said anyone with a computer science, math or engineering degree will find lots of opportunity on the job market and areas including web development, design, robotics and big data are also seeing a lot of growth. If you’re a good communicator and like working with people, Laurie also recommends a job in sales.

Health care jobs and careers focused on our aging population will also experience growth in the coming years.

“Occupations and industries that provide services and support to the aging population will certainly be growing over the next decade,” said Sean Lyons, associate professor in the College of Business and Economics at the University of Guelph.

The drop in oil prices means the once-booming oil and gas industry is taking a hit.

“We’ve seen some of our [oil and gas] clients cut jobs across the board,” said Laurie. “We’ve also heard that some companies are reducing the number of jobs they’re hiring for. So that’s going to be a much tighter market now, companies are letting people go, rather than hiring.”

Jobs in manufacturing will continue to become scarcer and scarcer over the next decade, said Haldenby, “Especially here in Canada where we’ll likely see a rapid upswing in automation through advanced robotics, smart systems, and sophisticated design tools that seem to do more and more of the heavy lifting for us.”

“Just about anything that you might be puzzled by a human tackling today — for safety, economic, or efficiency reasons — is going to be the job of an automated robotic system in the near future,” he said.

Occupations focused on youth are going to be “hit hard by Canada’s age demographics in the foreseeable future,” said Lyons.

Recently Target Canada closed down, leading to the unemployment of 17,500 employees. Target joins Mexx, Jacob, Sony, Smart Set and other chains that are closing or going bankrupt across the country. While the retail market is in tough at the moment, Laurie thinks this situation is temporary. “I personally feel there’s lots of opportunity in [the] retail sector, especially in tech and innovation side,” he said. However, the current retail closures present an opportunity for retailers who will have a large pool of highly qualified workers to select from.

On the heels of Target liquidating its 133 Canadian stores, Home Depot announced it would hire more than 2,600 people in Ontario, ramping up to its busy spring season.

While keeping on top of industry trends is one important method for navigating today’s job market, job seekers should also take a close look at the skills section of their resume. According to experts, it is important to obtaining and develop certain skills, rather than focusing entirely on specific jobs.

If you are considering relocating to Canada (Canada permanent residence or Canada work permit) and you want to improve your odds of getting a high-paying job after finishing your education, forget that English degree. A new report by Workopolis suggests that nursing and pharmacy students are most likely to gain employment in their field after graduation. The study, which analysed more than seven million resumes on the job search website, found that 97 per cent of those who studied nursing, whether it was at the bachelor, masters or PhD level, are working in jobs related to their education.

Other degrees that showed the highest return included pharmacy (94 per cent); computer science (91 per cent); engineering (90 per cent) and human resources (88 per cent). Although health-care jobs may be the most plentiful, the study also looked at data from Statistics Canada and found that engineering jobs were the highest-paying. Engineering graduates, on average, earned $76,000 as a starting salary, followed by health-care graduates with $69,600; computer science graduates with $68,000; and law and math graduates with $67,600.

Tara Talbot, vice-president of human resources at Workopolis, says that while students should follow their passions they should also be aware that their choice of study could affect how easy or difficult it will be to get a job. She says that it’s not surprising that skilled positions in the health industry are most in demand. Talbot adds that it’s also important to keep in mind that along with hard skills, like a specific degree or ability to operate certain programs and equipment, employers also value graduates with ‘soft skills’ such as communication, teamwork and problem-solving abilities.

“I believe that employers may not look just for someone with a degree in engineering, they look for people who have critical thinking skills, communicate well, and can problem solve. Often you get those through an education system, but also through experience.”

The study also suggests that Canadians are more educated now than they were in 2000, despite the majority saying their degrees are not relevant to their current jobs. Workopolis found that 16 per cent more people list a bachelor’s degree as their top level of education on their resumes in 2014, compared with resumes in 2000. Forty-three per cent more Canadians have master’s degrees listed on their resumes versus those in 2000, while 25 per cent have listed a PhD more than 14 years ago.

Despite spending longer in school, 73 per cent of those who recently answered a poll on the job site say their degrees are not related to their jobs. While over half believe they’re overeducated for their position. Between May 15 and June 2, over 3,600 people participated in the poll.

The polling industry’s professional body, the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error as they are not a random sample and therefore are not necessarily representative of the whole population.